iCOLIXCIIONS  OF 


1 


alifornia 

jional 

ility 


RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

OSCAR  WILDE 


RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

OSCAR  WILDE 


BY 

ERNEST   LA   JEUNESSE 
ANDRE   GIDE  AND  FRANZ  BLEI 

TRANSLATION    AND    INTRODUCTION 
BY 

PERCIVAL  POLLARD 


1906 
JOHN  W.  LUCE  AND  COMPANY 

BOSTON  AND   LONDON 


Copyright,  1906, 
By  PERCIVAL  POLLARD 


The  Plimpton  Press,  Norwood,  Mass. 


CONTENTS 

Introduction 

By  Percival  Pollard  .  7 
Recollections 

By  Andre*  Gide  ...  25 
Recollections 

Ernest  La  Jeunesse  .  .  67 
Recollections 

By  Franz  Blei  ....      89 


2032343 


INTRODUCTION 

BY 

PERCIVAL  POLLARD 


INTRODUCTION 

STROLLING  in  the  rare  sunshine  that 
visited  Berlin  in  the  spring  of  1905, 
chance  took  me  into  a  quaint  little  book- 
shop that  faces  what  was  once  the  work- 
shop of  venerable  Joseph  Joachim.  There, 
among  that  litter  of  old  and  new,  in  all 
tongues,  I  found  crystallised  what  much 
other  observation  had  already  hinted. 
Namely,  that  upon  the  continental  liter- 
ature concerning  itself  primarily  with 
formal  art  no  exotic  influence  was  more 
noticeable  than  that  of  Oscar  Wilde. 
Outside  influence  upon  the  German 

9 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

theatre  was  on  every  hand.  Farces  from 
the  French,  dismal  stuff  from  Scandi- 
navia, and  comedies  by  Bernard  Shaw 
and  J.  M.  Barrie,  were  taking  their 
turn  with  Hauptmann,  Sudermann,  Max 
Halbe,  Hartleben  and  Schnitzler  in  the 
repertoires  of  the  leading  German 
theatres.  But  the  piece  that  was  being 
played  oftenest,  on  both  sides  of  the 
Rhine,  was  Oscar  Wilde's  "Salome." 
When  you  went  beyond  the  theatre,  ey- 
ing the  windows  of  the  booksellers,  you 
saw  Wilde's  name  everywhere,  —  his 
"De  Profundis"  was  the  most  famous 
book  of  the  season  in  Berlin;  at  any  rate, 
the  booksellers  seemed  to  intimate  so; 
they  positively  plastered  their  showcases 
and  windows  with  Wilde  literature. 

Much  of  this  Wilde  literature  was  but 
repetition  of  what,  despite  the  whilom 

10 


INTRODUCTION 


aversion  from  this  writer's  work  here  and 
in  England,  is  already  fairly  familiar  to 
us.  One  curious  little  book  I  came  upon, 
however,  of  such  intimate,  melancholy 
interest,  that  I  determined  some  day  to 
turn  it  into  English.  This  I  have  now 
done. 

In  introducing  the  work  of  the  three 
contributors  to  this  little  book,  two 
Frenchmen  and  one  German,  I  would 
premise  that  there  must  be  many  readers 
who  have  been  astonished  to  find  in  the 
country  of  Gartenlaube  literature  and 
Rheinhold  Begas  statues  such  evident 
sympathy  for  a  talent  like  Wilde's.  The 
tremendous  modernisation  that  has  come 
over  German  art  and  letters  has  by  no 
means  been  generally  heralded.  Only 
the  barest  facts  may  here  be  hinted. 

The  movement  typified  in  England  by 

ii 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

the  Yellow  Book,  in  America  by  the  Lark, 
the  Cbap-Book,  and  similar  attempts 
away  from  the  academic,  had  a  few  years 
later  its  German  echo.  In  art  a  whole 
school  of  successful  men  now  testifies  to 
this  influence;  in  illustration  there  are 
Jugend  and  Simplicissimus,  conveying  to 
the  public  the  work  of  the  younger 
Munich  men;  in  letters  there  are  such 
men  as  Ernst  Von  Wolzogen,  Frank 
Wedekind,  Richard  Dehmel,  Otto  Julius 
Bierbaum,  and  many  others.  Just  as, 
through  Beardsley,  Wilde's  influence 
upon  our  illustrative  and  decorative  arts 
—  in  houses  as  well  as  in  prints  —  may 
still  be  found,  so  upon  a  number  of  Ger- 
man writers,  for  print  and  playhouse,  the 
Irishman's  influence  was  undoubted.  In 
the  thought-mode  of  a  number  of  suc- 
cessful writers  of  the  lighter  sort,  some  of 

12 


INTRODUCTION 


whom  were  named  just  now,  one  could 
mark  the  flowing  of  an  impetus  sprung 
from  the  author  of  "Salome." 

A  year  later,  in  the  spring  of  this  pres- 
ent year,  one  found  the  European  vogue 
of  Wilde  still  spreading.  In  Berlin,  "An 
Ideal  Husband"  was  on  the  boards  of  the 
Kleine  Theatre;  Vienna  was  issuing  a 
Complete  Edition;  in  Florence,  Leonardo 
Azzarita  was  pointing  out  the  Italian 
interest  in  "De  Profundis,"  just  as,  in 
Madrid,  Gomez  Carillo  had  been  giving 
fascinating  glimpses  of  the  author  of 
"Salome."  These  glimpses  I  would  well 
have  liked  to  include  as  a  chapter  in  this 
book,  side  by  side  with  the  glimpses  of 
Messrs.  Gide,  La  Jeunesse,  and  Blei.  But 
the  limits  set  for  this  brochure  forbid, 
and  I  must  content  myself  with  the  brief- 
est of  extracts  from  what  Carillo  gave  his 

13 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

Spanish  readers.  It  is  with  "Salome" 
that  these  extracts  deal;  inasmuch  as 
that  sombre  play  has  but  in  this  summer 
of  1906  been  for  the  first  time  offered  to 
the  London  public  —  offered,  and,  if  we 
may  believe  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm,  refused 
as  too  serious !  —  these  particulars  can 
scarce  fail  of  interest: 

In  those  days,  Carillo  wrote,  Wilde's 
thoughts  were  busied  only  with  the  lustful 
dance  of  Salome.  "You  are  from  Madrid?" 
And,  after  a  long  pause,  "If  for  no  other 
reason,  I  have  always  longed  to  go  to  Spain 
that  I  might  see  in  the  Prado  Titian's  Salome, 
of  which  Tintoretto  once  exclaimed:  'Here  at 
last  is  a  man  who  paints  the  very  quivering 
flesh!'  .  .  ."  No  day  went  by  without  his 
talking  to  me  of  Salome.  Now  it  was  a  pass- 
ing woman  who  started  him  dreaming  of  the 

14 


INTRODUCTION 


Hebraic  princess;  again  he  stood  for  hours 
before  the  jewelers'  windows  building  for  him- 
self the  ideal  combination  of  gems  with  which 
to  festoon  the  body  of  his  idol.  One  evening 
he  asked  me  suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  the 
street,  "Don't  you  think  she  is  better  en- 
tirely naked?  "  He  was  thinking  of  Salome. 
"Yes,"  he  went  on,  "absolutely  naked.  But 
strewn  with  jewels,  all  ringing  and  tinkling 
in  her  hair,  on  her  ankles,  her  wrists,  her 
throat,  enclosing  her  hips  and  heightening 
with  their  myriad  glittering  reflections  the 
unchastity  of  that  unchaste  amber  flesh.  For 
of  an  unknowing  Salome,  who  is  a  mere  tool, 
I  refuse  to  hear  a  word;  no,  no,  Salome 
knows.  .  .  ."  Another  time  his  Salome  was 
all  chastity.  I  recall  an  evening  when  Wilde 
came  from  the  Louvre,  and  began  to  speak  to 
me  of  a  gentle  princess  who  danced  before 
Herod  as  if  by  a  call  from  Heaven,  that  she 

15 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

might  finally  be  able  to  demand  punishment 
on  the  lying  enemy  of  Jehovah.  "Her  quiv- 
ering body,"  he  said,  "is  tall  and  pale  as  a 
lily;  nothing  sexual  is  in  her  beauty.  Veils 
woven  by  angels  conceal  her  slenderness,  her 
blond  hair  flows  like  molten  gold  over  her 
shoulders.  .  .  ."  Once  we  were  at  Jean  Lor- 
rain's.  Before  the  picture  of  a  beheaded 
woman,  a  very  pale  head,  Wilde  exclaimed, 
"Why,  that  is  Salome!"  And  at  once  he 
imagined  a  princess  who  brings  her  lover  the 
head  of  John,  and  then  immediately  sends 
her  own  head  also,  because  she  fancies  herself 
despised  by  the  young  man.  "It  is  exactly 
like  that,"  he  whispered.  "A  Nubian  gospel 
discovered  by  Boissiere  tells  of  a  young  phi- 
losopher, to  whom  a  Jewish  princess  makes  a 
present  of  an  apostle's  head.  The  youth  says 
to  her  smilingly,  "What  I  had  rather  have  is 
your  own  head,  sweetheart."  On  that  she 

16 


INTRODUCTION 


goes  away,  pale,  and  that  evening  a  slave 
brings  the  young  philosopher  on  a  golden 
plate  the  poor  little  head  of  his  sweetheart. 
The  scholar  says,  "Why  all  this  blood?"  and 
goes  on  reading  Plato.  "Don't  you  think 
that  is  Salome?"  .  .  .  "Write  that!"  said 
someone.  Wilde  actually  began  a  story  with 
the  title  "The  Double  Beheading."  He  soon 
tore  the  sheets  up,  and  thought  of  a  poem. 
That,  too,  he  relinquished,  and  chose  drama. 
.  .  .  Only  Gustave  Moreau's  portrait  un- 
veiled for  him  the  soul  of  the  dancing  princess 
of  his  dreams.  Many  a  time  he  simply  re- 
peated Huysman's  words,  "She  is  nearly 
naked.  In  the  whirl  of  the  dance  the  veils 
are  unloosed,  the  shawls  are  fallen  to  the 
ground,  and  only  jewels  clothe  her  body. 
The  tiniest  of  girdles  spans  her  hips;  between 
her  breasts  a  jewel  glitters  like  a  star.  .  .  ." 
Five  years  later,  in  prison,  in  hours  of  sleep- 

'7 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

lessness,  of  fever  and  hunger,  he  mechanically 
repeated  to  himself  the  words:  "Between  her 
breasts  a  jewel  glitters  like  a  star." 

What  this  Spaniard,  Carillo,  and  the 
three  other  European  continentals  com- 
posing this  little  book  have  given  us  in 
glimpses  of  this  man  seemed  to  me  of 
peculiar  and  personal  interest.  They 
must  add  to  the  general  understanding. 

If  that  general  understanding  comes 
slowly,  it  comes  none  the  less  surely.  A 
month  .after  Wilde's  death,  in  January, 
1901,  I  printed  an  essay  attempting 
definition  of  his  place  as  artist.  Time 
has  more  than  borne  out  all  those  fore- 
casts of  mine.  There  is  no  corner  of  the 
globe  where  something  of  his  has  not,  by 
now,  been  read  or  played.  Just  as  his 
writings  are  indisputably  a  part  of  the 

18 


INTRODUCTION 


literature  of  the  nineteenth  century,  so 
the  impress  made  by  the  man  himself 
belongs  in  any  history  of  the  manners  of 
that  century.  One  may  conceive  that  in 
Wilde  a  perverse  sense  of  loyalty  to  art 
kept  him  from  ever  displaying  the  real 
depth  below  his  obvious  insincerities;  he 
had  begun  by  being  a  public  fool;  he  had 
succeeded  in  establishing  folly  as  a  repu- 
tation for  himself;  and  the  rumor  of  his 
paradoxic  brilliance  was  too  secure  and 
too  amusing  for  him  to  risk  shattering  it 
with  glimpses  of  more  serious  depths. 
Yet  who  can  read  his  sonnet,  "Helas!" 
appearing  in  the  1881  edition  of  his 
POEMS,  without  feeling  that  under  the 
glitter  and  the  pose  there  was  something 
else,  something  the  gay  world  of  London 
knew  nothing  of?  Publicly,  Wilde  posed 
as  a  Soul  only  in  the  spirit  in  which  that 

'9 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

word  was  then,  in  the  'Eighties,  used  in 
English  society,  as  opposed  to  the  Smart  ; 
he  pretended  nothing  about  him  was 
genuine;  he  passed  for  a  symbol  of  his 
own  clever  defence  of  liars;  yet  in  "He- 
las!"  the  soul  gave  its  cry. 

What  he  hinted  in  that  sonnet  he  was 
eventually  to  prove  in  his  letters  from 
prison  to  Mr.  Ross,  printed  as  a  book 
under  the  title  "De  Profundis."  Just 
as  Pierre  Loti  once  wrote  a  Book  of  Pity 
and  of  Death,  so  might  "De  Profundis" 
be  called  Wilde's  Book  of  Pity  and  of 
Life.  Just  as  that  book  hints  the  tragedy 
of  his  prison  life,  a  tragedy  more  of  soul 
than  of  body,  so  does  this  present  little 
volume  disclose  some  few  facts  from  the 
man's  life  after  leaving  prison.  The  few 
had  perforce  to  read  "De  Profundis"  in 
the  light  of  their  knowledge  that  its 

20 


INTRODUCTION 


author,  after  all  the  resolutions  and  con- 
clusions in  that  document,  reverted  to 
his  baser  self,  and  died  with  his  life  fallen 
far  below  the  altitude  marked  in  the 
prison  letters.  That  knowledge  of  the 
few  is  set  forth  in  concrete,  intimate 
manner  in  the  following  pages.  It  is 
true  that  on  some  points  these  documents 
are  in  conflict;  as  in  the  matter  of  the 
number  following  Wilde's  body  to  the 
grave.  But  the  glimpses  of  the  man  just 
before  death,  as  Ernest  La  Jeunesse  and 
Andre  Gide  give  them  in  these  pages, 
remain  incontestably  valuable.  He  died 
and  was  buried.  Whether  seven  fol- 
lowed the  coffin,  or  thirteen;  whether  he 
now  lies  in  this  cemetery  or  that;  what 
matter?  His  work  lives  on. 
^  A  word  or  two  about  the  authors  with 
whose  pages  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of 

21 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

very  free  translation.  M.  La  Jeunesse 
is  one  of  the  wittiest  of  the  younger  Pari- 
sians. Much  of  his  work  has  been  on  the 
impudent  and  amusing  plane  of  a  Max 
Beerbohm.  His  volume  The  Nights, 
The  Ennuis,  and  The  Souls  of  our  Most 
Notorious  Contemporaries,  criticised, 
chiefly  by  way  of  parody,  all  the  biggest 
toads  in  the  puddle  of  French  letters; 
Zola,  Bourget,  Maeterlinck,  and  Anatole 
France  all  suffered  his  scalpel.  His  book 
of  drawings  in  caricature  of  such  men  as 
Rostand,  Pierre  Louy,  Jean  Lorrain, 
Barres  and  Jules  Lemaitre,  is  diverting 
in  the  extreme. 

Herr  Franz  Blei  is  one  of  the  talented 
men  connected  with  the  German  monthly, 
Die  Insel,  published  in  Leipzig  three  or 
four  years  ago,  under  the  direction  of 
Otto  Julius  Bierbaum.  Bierbaum  and 

22 


INTRODUCTION 


Blei  occasionally  wrote  for  the  stage  to- 
gether, and  Blei  has  constantly  been  to 
the  fore  in  translating  for  German  readers 
the  works  of  such  men  as  Walter  Pater, 
Ernest  Dowson,  and  Arthur  Symons. 

About  M.  Gide  I  regret  that  I  can  tell 
you  nothing;  I  prefer  to  invent  nothing. 
The  D —  referred  to  in  his  pages  is,  of 
course,  Lord  Alfred  Douglas,  who  mar- 
ried Olive  Custance,  and  whose  English 
version  of  "Salome"  has  lately  been 
issued. 

The  hotel-keeper,  mentioned  on  page 
66,  guards  to  this  day  the  rooms  in 
which  Wilde  died,  as  a  shrine,  not  with- 
out pecuniary  profit.  Indeed,  visitors 
have  had  amusing  proof  of  the  inex- 
haustible store  of  relics  he  commands. 
PERCIVAL  POLLARD. 

23 


RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

OSCAR  WILDE 

BY 

ANDRE   GIDE 


RECOLLECTIONS 

THOSE  who  came  to  know  Wilde 
only  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life 
can  scarcely,  in  view  of  that  feeble  and 
infirm  existence,  have  had  any  concep- 
tion of  this  wonderful  personality.  It 
was  in  1891  that  first  I  saw  him.  Wilde 
had  at  that  time  what  Thackeray  termed 
the  most  important  of  talents,  success. 
His  gestures,  his  look,  were  triumphant. 
So  complete  was  his  success  that  it 
seemed  as  if  it  had  preceded  him,  and 
Wilde  had  nothing  to  do  but  follow 
it  up.  His  books  were  talked  about. 

27 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

Plays  of  his  were  on  at  several  London 
theatres.  He  was  rich;  he  was  famous; 
he  was  beautiful.  Happiness  and  hon- 
ors were  his.  One  likened  him  to  an 
Asiatic  Bacchus;  or  to  a  Roman  Em- 
peror, or  even  to  Apollo  himself — what  is 
certain  is  that  he  was  radiant. 

When  he  came  to  Paris,  his  name 
traveled  from  lip  to  lip;  one  told  the 
most  absurd  anecdotes  about  him: 
Wilde  was  pictured  as  everlastingly 
smoking  gold-tipped  cigarettes  and  stroll- 
ing about  with  a  sunflower  in  his  hand. 
For  Wilde  had  always  the  gift  of  playing 
up  to  those  who  nowadays  fashion  fame, 
and  he  made  for  himself  an  amusing 
mask  that  covered  his  actual  counte- 
nance. 

I  heard  him  spoken  of  at  Mallarme's 
as  of  a  brilliant  causeur.  A  friend  in- 

28 


ANDRE  GIDE 


vited  Wilde  to  dinner.  There  were  four 
of  us,  but  Wilde  was  the  only  one  who 
talked. 

Wilde  was  not  a  causeur\  he  narrated. 
During  the  entire  meal  he  hardly  once 
ceased  his  narrating.  He  spoke  slowly, 
gently,  in  a  soft  voice.  He  spoke  ad- 
mirable French,  but  as  if  he  tapped  a 
little  for  the  words  he  was  using.  Hardly 
any  accent  at  all,  or  just  the  faintest  that 
he  chose  to  adopt,  giving  the  words  often 
a  quite  novel  and  foreign  air.  .  .  .  The 
stories  he  told  us  that  evening  were  con- 
fused and  not  of  his  best.  Wilde  was 
not  sure  of  us,  and  was  testing  us.  Of 
his  wisdom  or  his  folly  he  gave  only  what 
he  thought  his  listeners  might  like;  to 
each  he  served  a  dish  to  suit  the  taste; 
those  who  expected  nothing  of  him  re- 
ceived nothing  or  the  merest  froth ;  and, 

29 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

since  all  this  was  just  amusement  for 
him,  many,  who  think  they  know  him, 
know  him  only  as  an  entertainer. 

As  we  left  the  restaurant  on  that  occa- 
sion my  friends  went  ahead,  I  followed 
with  Wilde. 

"You  listen  with  your  eyes,"  he  said 
to  me  rather  abruptly,  "that  is  why  I 
tell  you  this  story: 

"When  Narcissus  died  the  pool  of  his 
pleasure  changed  from  a  cup  of  sweet 
waters  into  a  cup  of  salt  tears,  and  the 
Oreads  came  weeping  through  the  wood- 
land that  they  might  sing  to  the  pool 
and  give  it  comfort. 

"And  when  they  saw  that  the  pool 
had  changed  from  a  cup  of  sweet  waters 
into  a  cup  of  salt  tears,  they  loosened 
the  green  tresses  of  their  hair,  and  cried 
to  the  pool,  and  said:  'We  do  not  won- 

30 


ANDRE  GIDE 


der  that  you  should  mourn  in  this  man- 
ner for  Narcissus,  so  beautiful  was  he/ 

'"But  was  Narcissus  beautiful?'  said 
the  pool. 

'"Who  should  know  that  better  than 
you?'  answered  the  Oreads.  'Us  did 
he  ever  pass  by,  but  you  he  sought  for, 
and  would  lie  on  your  banks  and  look 
down  at  you,  and  in  the  mirror  of  your 
waters  he  would  mirror  his  own  beauty/ 

"And  the  pool  answered:  'But  I  loved 
Narcissus  because,  as  he  lay  on  my 
banks  and  looked  down  at  me,  in  the 
mirror  of  his  eyes  I  saw  my  own  beauty 
mirrored/" 

As  I  said:  before  others  Wilde  wore 
a  mask,  to  deceive,  to  amuse,  some- 
times to  anger.  He  never  listened,  and 
bothered  little  about  any  thought  that 
was  not  his  own.  If  he  could  not  shine 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

quite  alone,  he  withdrew  into  the  shadow. 
One  found  him  there  only  when  one  was 
alone  with  him. 

But  so,  alone,  he  began: 

"What  have  you  done  since  yester- 
day?" 

And  as  my  life  had  then  a  very  ordi- 
nary routine,  what  I  told  about  it  could 
hardly  interest  him  at  all.  I  rehearsed 
this  very  ordinary  matter,  and  Wilde's 
frown  showed. 

"Really  only  that?" 

"Really  nothing  new." 

"Then  why  tell  it?  You  must  see 
yourself  that  all  that  is  very  uninter- 
esting. There  are  just  two  worlds;  the 
one  exists  without  one  ever  speaking  of 
it;  that  is  called  the  real  world,  for  one 
does  not  need  to  speak  of  it  to  perceive 
its  existence.  The  other  is  the  world  of 


ANDRE  GIDE 


art:  one  must  talk  of  that,  for  without 
such  talk  it  would  not  exist. 

"There  was  once  a  man  who  was  be- 
loved in  his  village  for  the  tales  he  told. 
Every  morning  he  left  the  village,  and 
when  he  returned,  at  evening,  the  vil- 
lagers, who  had  tired  themselves  in 
labor  all  day  long,  assembled  before  him 
and  said,  —  Tell  us,  now,  what  you  saw 
to-day!  He  told  them:  I  saw  a  faun  in 
the  wood  piping  a  dance  to  little  wood- 
gods.  —  What  else?  Tell  us !  said  the 
people.  —  As  I  came  to  the  sea  I  saw  on 
the  waves  three  sirens  combing  their 
green  locks  with  a  golden  comb.  —  And 
the  people  loved  him  because  he  told 
them  stories. 

"One  morning  he  left  the  village  as 
usual  —  but  as  he  reached  the  sea  he 
saw  three  sirens,  three  sirens  on  the 

33 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

waves,  combing  with  golden  combs  their 
green  tresses.  And  as  he  fared  on,  he  saw 
in  the  wood  a  faun,  piping  before  dancing 
wood  nymphs.  .  .  .  When  he  reached 
his  village  that  evening  and  one  asked 
him  as  of  old:  Tell  us!  What  have  you 
seen?  he  answered:  I  have  seen  nothing/' 

Wilde  paused  a  little;  let  the  story 
work  into  me;  then: 

"I  do  not  like  your  lips;  they  are  the 
lips  of  one  who  has  never  lied.  I  shall 
teach  you  to  lie,  that  your  lips  may  grow 
beautiful  and  curved  as  those  of  an  an- 
tique mask. 

"Do  you  know  what  is  art  and  what 
is  nature?  And  the  difference  between 
them?  For  after  all  a  flower  is  as  beau- 
tiful as  any  work  of  art,  so  the  difference 
between  them  is  not  merely  beauty. 
Do  you  know  the  difference?  The  work 

34 


ANDRE  GIDE 


of  art  is  always  unique.  Nature,  that 
creates  nothing  permanent,  forever  re- 
peats itself,  so  that  nothing  of  what  she 
has  created  may  be  lost.  There  are 
many  narcisse,  so  each  can  live  but  one 
day.  And  every  time  that  Nature  in- 
vents a  new  form,  she  repeats  it.  A  sea- 
monster  in  one  sea  knows  that  its  image 
exists  in  some  other  sea.  When  God 
made  a  Nero,  a  Borgia,  a  Napoleon,  he 
was  only  replacing  their  likes;  we  do  not 
know  those  others,  but  what  matter? 
What  is  important  is  that  one  succeeded! 
For  God  achieves  man,  and  man  achieves 
the  work  of  art." 

That  Wilde  was  convinced  of  his 
aesthetic  mission  was  made  clear  to  me 
more  than  once. 

The  Gospel  disquieted  the  pagan  Wilde. 
He  did  not  forgive  its  miracles.  Pagan 

35 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

miracles,  those  were  works  of  art;  Chris- 
tianity robbed  him  of  those. 

"When  Jesus  returned  to  Nazareth," 
he  said,  "Nazareth  was  so  changed  that 
he  did  not  know  the  place.  The  Naz- 
areth of  his  day  had  been  full  of  misery 
and  tears;  this  town  laughed  and  sang. 
And  as  the  Lord  descended  into  the  town 
he  saw  flower-laden  slaves  hastening  up 
the  white  steps  of  a  marble  house.  He 
went  into  the  house  and  saw  in  a  jasper 
hall  reclining  upon  a  marble  couch  one 
in  whose  hair  were  twined  red  roses  and 
whose  lips  were  red  with  wine.  And 
the  Lord  stepped  behind  him,  touched 
his  shoulder  and  spoke  to  him:  'Why  do 
you  spend  your  life  like  this?'  The 
man  turned  around,  knew  him,  and 
said :  '  I  was  a  leper  once,  and  you  healed 
me  —  how  else  should  I  live?' 

36 


ANDRE  GIDE 


"And  the  Lord  left  the  house  and  re- 
turned upon  the  street.  And  after  a 
little  while  he  saw  one  whose  face  and 
garments  were  painted,  and  whose  feet 
were  shod  with  pearls.  And  after  her 
followed  a  youth,  softly,  slowly,  like  a 
hunter,  and  his  coat  was  of  two  colors 
and  lust  was  in  his  eyes.  But  the  face 
of  the  woman  was  as  the  lovely  face  of 
a  goddess.  And  the  Lord  touched  the 
youth's  hand,  and  said:  'Why  look  you 
so  upon  this  woman?'  And  the  youth 
turned  around,  knew  him,  and  said:  'I 
was  blind,  and  you  restored  my  sight. 
Upon  what  else  shall  I  look?' 

"And  the  Lord  approached  the  woman: 
'The  way  you  go  is  the  way  of  sin;  why 
do  you  go  that  way?'  And  the  woman 
knew  him,  and  said:  'The  way  I  go  is  a 
joyful  way,  and  you  forgave  me  my  sins.' 

37 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

"Then  the  Lord's  heart  filled  with 
sorrow,  and  he  wished  to  depart  from 
the  town.  And  as  he  came  to  the  gates, 
a  youth  was  sitting  by  the  roadside, 
weeping.  The  Lord  approached  him, 
touched  his  hair,  and  said  to  him:  'Why 
do  you  weep?' 

"And  the  youth  looked  up,  knew 
him,  and  said:  'I  was  dead,  and  you 
waked  me  from  the  dead.  What  else 
should  I  do  but  weep?'" 

"Shall  I  tell  you  a  secret?"  Wilde 
began,  another  time  —  it  was  at  Her£- 
dia's;  he  had  taken  me  aside  in  the 
middle  of  the  crowded  salon,  and  was 
confiding  this  to  me:  "Do  you  know  why 
Christ  did  not  love  his  mother?"  —  He 
spoke  quite  softly  into  my  ear,  as  if  in 
shame.  Then  he  made  a  slight  pause, 
took  me  by  the  arm,  and,  suddenly 

38 


ANDRE  GIDE 


breaking  into  a  loud  laughter:  "  Because 
she  was  a  virgin!" 

One  morning  Wilde  bade  me  read  a 
review  in  which  a  somewhat  unskilful 
critic  had  congratulated  him  upon  the 
fact  that  he  "gave  form  and  vesture  to 
his  ideas  by  way  of  daintily  invented 
stories/' 

"They  imagine,"  Wilde  began,  "that 
all  ideas  come  naked  into  the  world. 
They  do  not  understand  that  I  can  think 
in  no  other  way  save  in  stories.  The 
sculptor  does  not  translate  his  thought 
into  marble;  he  thinks  in  marble." 

Wilde  believed  in  a  sort  of  fate  in  art, 
and  that  ideas  were  stronger  than  men. 
" There  are,"  he  said,  "two  sorts  of 
artists:  these  offer  us  answers;  those 
offer  questions.  One  must  know  to 
which  of  these  sorts  one  belongs;  for  he 

39 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

who  asks  is  never  he  who  answers.  There 
are  works  of  art  that  stand  waiting,  that 
one  does  not  understand  for  a  long  time, 
for  the  reason  that  they  offer  answers  to 
questions  that  one  has  not  yet  put;  for 
often  the  question  comes  dreadfully  long 
after  the  answer." 

And  he  said,  also: 

"The  soul  comes  old  into  the  body, 
which  must  age  to  give  her  youth. 
Plato  was  the  youth  of  Socrates." 

Then  I  did  not  see  Wilde  again  for 
three  years. 

A  stubborn  rumor  that  grew  with  his 
success  as  playwright  ascribed  extraor- 
dinary habits  to  Wilde,  about  which 
some  people  voiced  their  irritation  smil- 
ingly, others  not  at  all;  it  was  added  that 
Wilde  made  no  secret  of  it,  and  spoke 
of  it  without  embarrassment  —  some  said 

40 


ANDRE  GIDE 


he  spoke  with  bravado,  some  with  cyn- 
icism, some  with  affectation.  I  was  very 
much  astonished;  nothing  in  the  time  I 
had  known  Wilde  had  led  me  to  suspect 
this.  But  already  his  old  friends  were 
cautiously  leaving  him.  Not  yet  did 
one  quite  disown  him.  But  one  no 
longer  spoke  of  having  known  him. 

An  unusual  accident  brought  us  to- 
gether again.  It  was  in  January,  1895. 
A  fit  of  the  blues  had  driven  me  to  travel, 
seeking  solitude  rather  than  change.  I 
hurried  through  Algiers  to  Blidah;  left 
Blidah  for  Biskra.  Leaving  the  hotel, 
my  eyes  fall,  in  weary  curiosity,  upon  the 
black  tablet  that  bears  the  names  of  the 
hotel-guests.  And  next  to  my  own  I 
see  Wilde's  name.  I  was  hungry  for 
solitude,  and  I  took  the  sponge  and 
wiped  my  name  out. 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

Even  before  I  reached  the  station  I 
was  in  doubt  as  to  whether  I  had  not 
acted  as  a  coward,  and  I  had  my  trunk 
brought  back,  and  re-wrote  my  name  on 
the  tablet. 

In  the  three  years  since  last  I  had 
seen  him  —  I  do  not  count  a  very  hasty 
encounter  in  Florence  —  Wilde  had 
changed  visibly.  One  felt  less  softness 
in  his  look,  and  there  was  something 
coarse  in  his  laughter,  something  forced 
in  his  gaiety.  At  the  same  time  he 
seemed  more  certain  of  pleasing,  and  less 
anxious  to  succeed;  he  was  bolder, 
greater,  more  sure  of  himself.  And 
curiously  enough  he  spoke  no  longer  in 
parables;  not  one  single  story  did  I  hear 
from  him  the  whole  time. 

At  first  I  voiced  my  wonder  at  finding 
him  in  Algiers.  "I  am  running  away 

42 


ANDRE  GIDE 


from  art,"  he  replied,  "I  want  to  wor- 
ship only  the  sun.  .  .  .  Have  you  never 
noticed  how  the  sun  despises  all  thought? 
He  always  discourages  thought;  it  flies 
to  the  shadows.  Thought  once  dwelt 
in  Egypt;  the  sun  conquered  Egypt. 
Long  it  lived  in  Greece;  the  sun  con- 
quered Greece,  then  Italy,  then  France. 
To-day  all  thought  is  crowded  out, 
driven  into  Norway,  and  Russia,  where 
the  sun  never  comes.  The  sun  is  jealous 
of  art." 

To  worship  the  sun,  that  was  to  wor- 
ship life.  Wilde's  lyric  worship  grew 
fierce  and  dreadful.  A  destiny  deter- 
mined him;  he  could  not  and  would  not 
escape  it.  He  seemed  to  apply  all  his 
care,  all  his  courage  to  the  task  of  exag- 
gerating his  fate,  and  making  it  worse 
for  himself.  He  went  about  his  pleasure 

43 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

as  one  goes  about  one's  duty.  "It  is 
my  duty,"  he  said,  "to  amuse  myself 
frightfully." 

Nietzsche  did  not  surprise  me  so 
much,  later,  because  I  had  heard  Wilde 
say:  —  "Not  happiness!  Anything  but 
happiness!  But  pleasure,  yes;  pleasure, 
joy!  One  must  always  want  what  is 
most  tragic." 

As  he  walked  through  the  streets  of 
Algiers,  he  was  the  centre  of  a  most 
strange  crew;  he  chatted  with  each  of 
these  fellows;  they  delighted  him,  and 
he  threw  his  money  at  their  heads. 

"I  hope,"  he  said,  "that  I  have 
thoroughly  demoralised  this  town."  I 
thought  of  Flaubert's  reply,  when  he 
had  been  asked  what  glory  he  held  most 
worthy  —  "La  gloire  de  demoralisateur." 

All  this  filled  me  with  astonishment, 

44 


ANDRE  GIDE 


wonder,  and  dread.  I  was  aware  of  his 
shattered  condition,  of  the  attacks  and 
enmities  aimed  at  him,  and  what  dark 
disquiet  he  concealed  under  his  aban- 
donment of  gaiety.  One  evening  he 
appeared  to  have  made  up  his  mind  to 
say  absolutely  nothing  serious  or  sincere. 
His  paradoxes  irritated  me,  and  I  told 
him  his  plays,  his  books,  were  far  from 
being  as  good  as  his  talk.  Why  did  he 
not  write  as  well  as  he  talked?  "Yes," 
said  Wilde,  "the  plays  are  not  great;  I 
think  nothing  of  them;  .  .  .  but  if  you 
only  knew  how  amusing  they  are!  .  .  . 
Incidentally,  most  of  them  are  the  re- 
sults of  bets.  So  is  'Dorian  Grey.'  I 
wrote  that  in  a  few  days,  because  one  of 
my  friends  asserted  I  would  never  write 
a  novel."  He  leaned  towards  me  and 
added:  "Do  you  wish  to  know  the  great 

45 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

drama  of  my  life?  I  have  given  my 
genius  to  my  life,  to  my  work  only  my 
talent." 

Wilde  spoke  of  returning  to  London; 

the  Marquis  of  Q was  abusing  him, 

and  accusing  him  of  flight.  "But,"  I 
asked,  "if  you  go  to  London,  do  you 
know  what  you  are  risking?" 

"That  is  something  one  should  never 
know.  My  friends  are  funny;  they  ad- 
vise caution.  Caution !  How  can  I  have 
that?  That  would  mean  my  immediate 
return.  I  must  go  as  far  away  as  pos- 
sible. And  now  I  can  go  no  further. 
Something  must  happen  —  something 
different." 

The  next  morning  Wilde  was  on  his 
way  to  London. 

The  rest  is  well  known.  That  "some- 
thing different"  was  hard  labor  in  prison. 


ANDRE  GIDE 


From  prison  Wilde  came  to  France. 

In  B ,  a  remote  little  village  near 

Dieppe,  there  settled  a  Sebastian  Mel- 
moth;  that  was  he.  Of  his  French 
friends  I  had  been  the  last  to  see  him;  I 
wished  to  be  the  first  to  see  him  again. 
I  arrived  about  midday,  without  having 
announced  myself  in  advance.  Mel- 
moth,  whom  friendship  with  T 

brought  often  to  Dieppe,  was  not  ex- 
pected back  that  evening.  He  did  not 
arrive  until  midnight. 

It  was  still  nearly  winter,  cold  and 
bitter.  All  day  long  I  mooned  about 
the  deserted  strand,  bored  and  moody. 

How  could  Wilde  have  chosen  this  B 

to  live  in?  This  boded  no  good. 

Night  came,  and  I  went  into  the  hotel, 
the  only  one  in  the  place,  where  Mel- 

47 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

moth,  too,  lodged.  It  was  eleven,  and 
I  had  begun  to  despair  of  my  waiting, 
when  I  heard  wheels.  M.  Melmoth  had 
returned. 

He  was  numb  with  cold.  On  the  way 
home  he  had  lost  his  overcoat.  A  pea- 
cock's feather  that  his  servant  had 
brought  him  the  day  before  may  have 
given  him  a  foreboding  of  ill  luck;  he 
expresses  himself  as  fortunate  to  have 
got  off  with  only  the  loss  of  his  overcoat. 
He  shakes  with  the  cold,  and  the  whole 
hotel  is  astir  to  make  him  a  hot  grog, 
He  scarcely  has  a  greeting  for  me.  He 
does  not  wish  to  show  his  emotion  before 
the  others.  And  my  own  excited  ex- 
pectation quiets  down  as  I  find  in  Sebas- 
tian Melmoth  so  completely  the  Oscar 
Wilde,  —  not  the  hard,  strained,  force- 
ful Wilde  of  Algiers,  but  the  soft,  pliable 

48 


ANDRE  GIDE 


Wilde  of  before  the  crisis;  I  feel  myself 
set  back  not  two  years,  but  four  or  five; 
the  same  arresting  look,  the  same  win- 
ning smile,  the  same  voice. 

He  lodged  in  two  rooms,  the  best  in 
the  house,  and  had  furnished  them  taste- 
fully. Many  books  on  the  table,  among 
which  he  showed  me  my  "Nourritures 
Terrestres,"  then  but  just  out.  On  a 
high  pedestal,  in  the  shadow,  a  Gothic 
Madonna. 

We  sat  at  table  by  lamplight,  and 
Wilde  sipped  his  grog.  Now,  in  the 
better  light,  I  note  how  the  skin  of  his 
face  has  roughened  and  coarsened,  and 
his  hands  still  more,  those  hands  with 
their  fingers  still  covered  by  the  same 
rings,  even  the  lapis  lazuli  in  its  pendant 
setting,  to  which  he  was  so  much  at- 
tached. His  teeth  are  horribly  decayed. 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

We  chat.  I  speak  of  our  last  meeting 
in  Algiers,  and  if  he  recalls  my  then  fore- 
telling his  catastrophe.  "  You  must  have 
foreseen  the  danger  into  which  you  were 
plunging?'' 

"Of  course!  I  knew  a  catastrophe 
would  come  —  this  one  or  that  one.  I 
expected  it.  It  had  to  end  like  that. 
Think!  Going  on  was  impossible.  An 
end  had  to  be.  Prison  has  utterly 
changed  me.  And  I  have  counted  on 

that.  D is  terrible;  he  will  not 

understand  my  not  taking  up  my  old 
life;  he  accuses  the  others  of  having 
changed  me.  .  .  .  But  one  can  never 
take  up  the  same  life.  .  .  .  My  life  is 
like  a  work  of  art;  an  artist  never  begins 
the  same  thing  twice.  My  life,  before 
I  was  in  prison,  was  a  success.  Now  it 
is  quite  ended." 

50 


ANDRE  GIDE 


Wilde  lit  a  cigarette. 

"The  public  is  dreadful;  it  judges  only 
by  what  one  has  done  last.  If  I  returned 
to  Paris  it  would  see  only  the  condemned 
man.  I  shall  not  appear  again  until  I 
have  written  a  play."  —  And  then, 
abruptly:  "Was  I  not  quite  right  to 
come  here?  My  friends  wanted  to  order 
me  South,  for  rest,  for  at  first  I  was  quite 
unstrung.  But  I  begged  them  to  find 
me  a  quiet  little  village  somewhere  in 
Northern  France,  where  I  would  see  no- 
body, where  there  is  some  cold  and 
hardly  any  sunshine.  I  have  all  that, 
here. 

"Everyone  is  very  nice  to  me  here, 
especially  the  clergyman.  His  little 
church  is  a  great  pleasure  to  me.  Think: 
it  is  called  the  Church  of  Our  Lady  of 
Joy  —  Isn't  that  delightful?  —  And  now 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

I  am  quite  sure  I  shall  never  be  able  to 

leave  B ,  for  this  very  morning  the 

clergyman  has  offered  me  a  pew! 

"And  the  customs  officers!  How  bored 
such  people  are!  I  asked  them  if  they 
had  nothing  to  read,  and  now  I  am  getting 
for  them  all  the  novels  of  the  elder  Dumas. 
1  must  stay  here,  eh? 

"And  the  children  here  worship  me. 
On  the  Queen's  birthday  I  gave  a  feast 
to  forty  school-children  —  the  whole 
school  was  there,  with  the  teacher!  For 
the  Queen's  Day!  Isn't  that  delightful? 
.  .  .  You  know,  I  am  very  fond  of  the 
Queen.  I  always  have  her  picture  by 
me/'  And  he  showed  me  Nicholson's 
portrait  of  the  Queen  pinned  to  the  wall. 
I  arise  to  examine  it;  a  small  bookcase  is 
underneath  it;  I  look  at  the  books.  I 
wished  to  induce  Wilde  to  talk  more 

52 


ANDRE  GIDE 


seriously.  I  sit  down  again,  and  ask 
him,  somewhat  timidly,  if  he  has  read 
the  "Recollections  in  a  Morgue."  He 
does  not  reply  directly. 

"These  Russian  writers  are  extraordi- 
nary; what  makes  their  books  so  great 
is  the  pity  they  put  into  them.  Formerly 
I  adored  'Madame  Bovary';  but  Flau- 
bert would  have  no  pity  in  his  books,  and 
the  air  in  them  is  close;  pity  is  the  open 
door  through  which  a  book  can  shine 
eternally.  ...  Do  you  know,  it  was 
pity  that  kept  me  from  suicide.  For  the 
first  six  months  I  was  so  dreadfully  un- 
happy that  I  longed  to  kill  myself  — 
but  I  saw  the  others.  I  saw  their  un- 
happiness;  it  was  my  pity  for  them  that 
saved  me.  Oh,  the  wonder  of  pity! 
And  once  I  did  not  know  pity."  He 
said  this  quite  softly  and  without  any 

53 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

exaltation.  "Do  you  know  how  won- 
derful pity  is?  I  thanked  God  every 
night,  yes,  on  my  knees  I  thanked  Him, 
that  He  had  made  me  acquainted  with 
pity.  For  I  entered  prison  with  a  heart 
of  stone,  and  thought  only  of  my  own 
pleasure;  but  now  my  heart  is  quite 
broken;  pity  has  entered  in;  I  know  now 
that  pity  is  the  greatest  and  loveliest 
thing  in  the  world.  .  .  .  And  that  is  why 
I  can  have  nothing  against  those  who 
condemned  me,  for  without  them  I 
would  not  have  experienced  all  this. 

D writes    me    horrible    letters;    he 

writes  that  he  does  not  understand  me, 
does  not  understand  my  not  taking  arms 
against  the  whole  world;  since  all  have 
been  abominable  to  me.  .  .  .  No;  he 
does  not  understand,  cannot  understand 
me.  In  every  letter  I  tell  him  that  our 

54 


ANDRE  GIDE 


ways  lie  apart ;  his  is  the  way  of  pleasure 
—  mine  is  not.  His  is  that  of  Alcibiades; 
mine  that  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi.  .  .  . 
Do  you  know  St.  Francis?  Will  you  do 
me  a  very  great  pleasure?  Send  me  the 
best  life  of  our  Saviour!" 
I  promised;  and  he  went  on: 
"  Yes  —  towards  the  last  we  had  a 
splendid  warden,  a  charming  man!  But 
for  the  first  six  months  I  was  utterly, 
completely  unhappy.  The  warden,  then, 
was  a  horrible  creature,  a  cruel  Jew, 
without  any  imagination."  I  had  to 
laugh  at  the  absurdity  of  this  rapidly 
uttered  comment,  and  Wilde  laughed  too. 
"  Yes,  he  did  not  know  what  to  invent 
for  our  torturing.  .  .  .  You  shall  see 
how  void  of  imagination  the  man  was. 
You  must  know  that  in  prison  one  has 
but  an  hour  in  the  sunshine,  that  is,  one 

55 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

marches  around  the  yard  in  a  circle,  one 
after  the  other,  and  is  forbidden  to  say  a 
word.  One  is  watched,  and  there  are 
dreadful  punishments  if  one  is  caught 
talking.  The  novices,  who  are  in  prison 
for  the  first  time,  can  be  distinguished 
by  their  inability  to  speak  without  mov- 
ing their  lips.  For  ten  weeks  I  had  been 
there,  and  had  not  spoken  a  word  to  a 
soul.  One  evening,  just  as  we  are  mak- 
ing our  round,  one  behind  the  other,  I 
suddenly  hear  my  name  spoken  behind 
me.  It  was  the  prisoner  behind  me, 
who  was  saying:  'Oscar  Wilde,  I  pity 
you,  for  you  are  suffering  more  than 
me/  I  made  the  greatest  efforts  not  to 
be  observed,  and  said,  without  turning 
around:  'No,  my  friend;  we  all  suffer 
alike/  And  on  that  day  I  did  not  think 
of  suicide. 

56 


ANDRE  GIDE 


"  In  this  way  we  often  talked  together. 
I  knew  his  name  and  what  he  was  in  for. 

He  was  called  P ,  and  was  a  fine 

fellow!  But  I  had  not  yet  the  trick  of 
speaking  with  motionless  lips,  and  one 
evening  'C.  33!'  ( —  that  was  I  — )  'C.  33 
and  C.  48  fall  out!'  We  left  the  rank, 
and  the  turnkey  said:  'You  are  to  go 
before  the  warden!'  And  as  pity  was 
already  in  my  heart  I  had  fear  only  for 
him;  I  was  even  happy  that  I  must  suffer 
on  his  account.  —  Well,  the  warden  was 

simply  a  monster.     He  called  P first ; 

he  wished  to  hear  us  separately  —  since 
the  punishment  for  the  one  who  has 
spoken  first  is  twice  as  heavy  as  for  the 
other;  usually  the  former  gets  a  fort- 
night in  the  dark  cell,  the  latter  only  a 
week;  so  the  warden  wanted  to  know 
which  of  us  two  had  been  the  first.  And 

57 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

of  course  P said  he  was.  And  when 

the  warden  interrogated  me  presently, 
of  course  I,  too,  said  it  had  been  I.  That 
enraged  the  man  so  that  his  face  went 
scarlet,  for  he  could  not  understand  such 

a  thing.  '  But  P declares  also  that 

he  began!  I  don't  understand.  .  .  .' 

"What  do  you  say  to  that,  mon  cler? 
He  could  not  understand!  He  was  very 
much  embarrassed.  'But  I  have  al- 
ready given  him  fourteen  days.  .  .  / 
and  then : '  Very  well !  If  this  is  the  case, 
you  simply  both  get  fourteen  days/ 
Splendid,  that,  eh?  The  man  simply 
had  not  an  atom  of  imagination."  Wilde 
was  greatly  amused;  he  laughed,  and 
went  on  talking  gaily: 

"Naturally,  after  the  fourteen  days, 
our  desire  to  talk  was  all  the  keener. 
You  know  how  sweet  is  the  sensation  of 


ANDRE  GIDE 


suffering  for  others.  Gradually  —  one 
did  not  always  parade  in  just  the  same 
sequence  —  gradually  I  managed  to  talk 
with  all  of  them!  I  knew  the  name  of 
every  single  one,  his  story,  and  when  he 
would  be  leaving  prison.  And  to  each  I 
said:  The  first  thing  you  are  to  do  when 
you  come  out  is  to  go  to  the  post-office; 
there  will  be  a  letter  there  for  you  with 
money.  .  .  .  There  were  some  splendid 
fellows  among  them.  Will  you  believe 
me  if  I  tell  you  that  already  some  three 
of  my  fellow  prisoners  have  visited  me 
here?  Is  that  not  wonderful? 

"The  unimaginative  warden  was  suc- 
ceeded by  a  very  nice  one.  Now  I 
could  ask  to  read  whatever  I  wished.  I 
thought  of  the  Greeks,  and  that  they 
would  please  me.  I  asked  for  Sophocles, 
but  he  was  not  to  my  taste.  Then  I 

59 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

thought  of  the  writers  on  religion;  those, 
too,  failed  to  hold  me.  And  suddenly  I 
thought  of  Dante.  ...  oh,  Dante!  I 
read  Dante  every  day  in  the  Italian, 
every  page  of  him;  but  neither  the  Pur- 
gatory nor  the  Paradise  was  intended 
for  me.  But  the  Inferno!  What  else 
was  I  to  do  but  adore  it?  Hell  —  were 
we  not  dwelling  in  it?  Hell,  that  was 
the  prison." 

The  same  night  he  spoke  to  me  of  his 
dramatic  scheme  of  a  Pharaoh,  and  of  a 
spirited  story  on  Judas. 

The  following  morning  Wilde  took  me 
to  a  charming  little  house,  not  far  from 
the  hotel,  that  he  had  rented,  and  was 
beginning  to  furnish.  Here  he  meant  to 
write  his  plays:  first,  the  Pharaoh,  then 
an  "Achab  and  Isabella/'  the  story  of 
which  he  told  marvellously. 

60 


ANDRE  GIDE 


The  carriage  that  is  to  drive  me  off  is 
ready.  Wilde  gets  in  with  me  to  ac- 
company me  a  little  distance.  He  speaks 
of  my  book,  praises  it  cautiously.  The 
carriage  stops.  Wilde  gets  out  and  says 
goodbye;  then  abruptly:  "Look  here, 
mon  cher,  you  must  promise  me  some- 
thing. The  'Nourritures  Terrestres'  is 
good  .  .  .  very  good.  But,  mon  cber, 
promise  me  never  to  write  T  again. 
In  art  there  is  no  first  person." 

Back  in  Paris  again,  I  told  D my 

news.  He  declared: 

"All  that  is  quite  ridiculous.  Wilde 
is  incapable  of  suffering  boredom.  I 
know  him  very  well;  he  writes  to  me 
every  day.  I  dare  say  he  may  finish  his 
play  first,  but  then  he  will  come  back  to 
me.  He  never  did  anything  great  in 
solitude,  he  needs  distractions.  He  wrote 

61 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

his  best  while  with  me.  —  Look  at  his 

last  letter.  .  .  ."     D read  it  out  to 

me.     In  it  Wilde  implored  D to  let 

him  finish  his  Pharaoh  in  peace;  that 
then  he  would  return,  return  to  him. 
The  letter  closed  with  this  glorious  sen- 
tence—  "And  then  I  shall  be  King  of 
Life  once  more!" 

Soon  afterward  Wilde  returned  to 
Paris.  The  play  was,  and  remained,  un- 
written. When  Society  wishes  to  de- 
stroy a  man,  she  knows  what  is  needed, 
and  she  has  methods  more  subtle  than 
death.  .  .  .  Wilde  had  for  two  years 
suffered  too  much  and  too  passively;  his 
will  was  broken.  For  the  first  few 
months  he  was  still  able  to  set  up  illu- 
sions for  himself;  but  soon  he  gave  up 
even  those.  It  was  an  abdication.  Noth- 
ing was  left  of  his  crushed  life  but  the 

62 


ANDRE  GIDE 


sorrowful  memory  of  what  he  had  once 
been;  some  wit  still  was  there;  occa- 
sionally he  tested  it,  as  if  to  try  whether 
he  still  was  capable  of  thought;  but  it 
was  a  crackling,  unnatural,  tortured  wit. 
I  only  saw  Wilde  twice  again. 
One  evening  on  the  Boulevards,  as  I 

was  walking  with  G ,  I  heard  myself 

called  by  name.  I  turn  around,  it  was 
Wilde!  How  changed  he  was!  "If  I 
should  reappear  before  I  have  written 
my  play,  the  world  will  see  in  me  only 
the  convict,"  he  had  said.  He  had  re- 
turned without  his  play,  and  when 
some  doors  closed  against  him  he  sought 
entry  nowhere  else;  he  turned  vagabond. 
Friends  often  tried  to  save  him;  one 
tried  to  think  what  was  to  be  done  for 
him;  one  took  him  to  Italy.  Wilde  soon 
escaped,  slipped  back.  Of  those  who 

63 


RECOLLECTIONS  OP  OSCAR  WILDE 

had  remained  longest  faithful  to  him, 
some  had  several  times  told  me  that 
Wilde  had  disappeared.  Hence  I  was,  I 
admit,  a  trifle  embarrassed  to  see  him 
again  like  that,  in  that  place.  Wilde 
was  sitting  on  the  terrace  of  a  cafe.  He 
ordered  two  cocktails  for  myself  and 

G .  I  sat  down  facing  him,  so  that 

my  back  was  to  those  passing.  Wilde 
noticed  that  and  ascribed  it  to  an  absurd 
shame  on  my  part,  and  not  altogether,  I 
regret  to  say,  with  injustice. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "sit  down  here,  next 
to  me,"  and  pointed  to  a  chair  by  his 
side,  "I  am  so  utterly  alone  now!" 

Wilde  was  still  quite  well  dressed;  but 
his  hat  no  longer  was  brilliant,  his  collar 
was  still  of  the  old  cut,  but  not  quite  so 
immaculate,  and  the  sleeves  of  his  coat 
showed  faint  fringes. 

64 


ANDRE  GIDE 


"When  once  I  met  Verlaine,"  he  be- 
gan, with  a  touch  of  pride,  "  I  did  not 
blush  at  him.  I  was  rich,  joyous,  famous, 
but  I  felt  that  it  was  an  honor  for  me 
to  be  seen  with  Verlaine,  even  though 
he  was  drunk."  Perhaps  because  he 

feared  to  bore  G ,  he  suddenly 

changed  his  tone,  attempted  to  be  witty, 
to  jest;  his  talk  became  mere  stumbling. 
As  we  arose  Wilde  insisted  upon  paying. 
When  I  was  bidding  him  farewell  he  took 
me  aside  and  said,  in  a  low  and  confused 
tone,  "Listen:  you  must  pay  ...  I  am 
quite  without  means.  .  .  ." 

A  few  days  later  I  saw  him  again  for 
the  last  time.  Let  me  mention  but  one 
thing  of  those  we  talked  of:  he  bewailed 
his  inability  to  undertake  his  art  once 
more.  I  reminded  him  of  his  promise, 
that  he  had  made  to  himself,  not  to  re- 

65 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

turn  to  Paris  without  a  completed 
play. 

He  interrupted  me,  laid  his  hand  on 
mine,  and  looked  at  me  quite  sadly: 

"One  must  ask  nothing  of  one  who 
has  failed." 

Oscar  Wilde  died  in  a  miserable  little 
hotel  in  the  Rue  des  Beaux-Arts.  Seven 
persons  followed  to  his  funeral,  and  not 
all  of  these  accompanied  him  to  his  last 
resting-place.  Flowers  and  wreaths  lay 
on  the  coffin.  Only  one  piece  bore  an 
inscription;  it  was  from  his  landlord;  and 
on  it  one  read  these  words:  "A  mon 
locataire" 


66 


RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

OSCAR  WILDE 

BY 

ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


RECOLLECTIONS 

IF,  without  looking  more  closely,  one 
happened  to  notice  this  slowly  mov- 
ing and  very  solemn  gentleman  as  he 
strolled  our  boulevards  in  his  expansive 
corpulence,  one  jumped  at  once  to  the 
conclusion  that  to  himself  and  in  him- 
self he  appeared  as  a  mourning  pro- 
cessional. 

Never  was  there  a  more  utter  victim 
of  the  misunderstanding  between  the 
mob  and  the  poet.  The  public  longs 
to  be  fooled.  It  has  a  right  to  decep- 
tion, as  it  has  a  right  to  bread,  or  to  its 

69 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

dreams  —  and  the  real  dreams  of  the 
night-time  are  so  rare  and  so  difficult! 
It  wants  to  dream,  of  an  evening,  in  the 
theatre,  so  that  in  the  daytime  it  may 
have  matter  for  astonishment  and  for 
wonder;  it  wants  to  be  excited,  at  break 
of  day,  before  work  comes,  by  the  mur- 
ders and  crimes  in  the  newspapers. 

When  once  a  thaumaturg  —  and  I 
choose  the  word  purposely,  one  that 
Wilde  respected  highly  —  undertakes  to 
fool  the  public,  he  has  the  right  to 
choose  his  material  where  he  finds  it; 
one  does  not  expect  of  him  moral  and 
social  lessons,  but  inventions,  tricks, 
words,  a  touch  of  heaven  and  a  touch 
of  hell,  and  what  not  else;  he  must  be 
Proteus  and  Prometheus,  must  be  able 
to  transform  all  things,  and  himself;  he 
must  reveal  the  secret  of  this  or  that  life 

70 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


for  the  readers  of  his  paper  or  the  patrons 
of  his  theatre;  he  must  be  confessor, 
prophet,  and  magician;  he  must  dissect 
the  world  with  the  exactness  of  a  doc- 
trinarian and  recreate  it  anew  the  mo- 
ment after,  by  the  light  of  his  poetic 
fancy;  he  must  produce  formulas  and 
paradoxes,  and  even  barbaric  puns  with 
nothing  save  their  antiquity  to  save  them. 
For  this  price  —  a  well  paid  one  —  he 
can  find  distraction  after  the  manner  of 
the  gods  or  the  fallen  angels,  and  seek 
for  himself  excitements  and  deceptions, 
since  he  has  advanced,  and  eventually 
crossed  the  borders  of  ordinary  human 
emotions  and  sensations.  Wilde  had 
paid  the  price.  Now,  with  the  coin  of 
his  artistic  triumphs,  he  longed,  among 
a  thousand  nobler  and  more  interesting 
things,  to  play  the  young  man. 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

He  played  badly. 

Now  it  was  the  public  that  was  duped 
in  duping  him.  For  the  only  fortune, 
good  or  bad,  permitted  to  the  poet  is  of 
the  sort  that  an  octogenarian  biographer 
delights  to  present  after  the  poet's  death. 

Wilde  in  exile  remained  always  Eng- 
lish: I  mean  to  say  that  he  had  pity  with 
all  victims  without  hatred  for  the  judges. 
He  approved  completely  of  the  sentence 
and  execution  of  that  Louise  Masset  who 
was  hanged  for  the  killing  of  her  child. 
He  followed  closely  the  course  of  events 
in  the  Transvaal,  and  was  all  enthusiasm 
for  Kitchener  and  Roberts,  a  touching 
trait  in  an  exile.  Irishman  by  birth,  an 
Italian  in  his  inclinations,  Greek  in  cul- 
ture and  Parisian  in  his  passion  for  para- 
dox and  blague,  he  never  could  forget 
London  —  London,  in  whose  fogs  he  had 

72 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


found  all  his  triumphs;  London,  into 
which  he  had  brought  all  exotic  civilisa- 
tions; London,  that  in  his  vanity  he  had 
transformed  into  a  monstrous  garden  of 
flowers  and  palaces,  of  subtlest  sugges- 
tion and  discreetest  charm.  His  imper- 
tinences toward  the  English  had  been 
those  of  a  benevolent  monarch.  When 
he  came  late  into  a  salon,  without  greet- 
ing to  anyone,  accosted  the  hostess  and 
asked,  quite  audibly:  "Do  I  know  any- 
body here?"  that  was  nothing  but  his 
singular  gallantry;  he  had  by  no  means 
the  intention  of  slighting  this  one  or  that 
one,  but  wished  merely  to  avoid  the 
appearance  of  knowing  all  the  world, 
inasmuch  as  the  hostess  herself  probably 
knew  only  a  small  number  of  her  guests. 
He  has  been  accused  of  a  green  carnation 
and  a  cigarette;  it  was  for  that,  perhaps, 

73 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

that  for  twenty-four  months  he  was  de- 
prived of  all  tobacco  and  all  flowers. 
He  has  been  reproached  of  having  spent 
twice  the  1 50,000  francs  his  plays  brought 
him  in;  he  was  declared  bankrupt.  His 
name  was  erased  from  the  hoardings  and 
from  the  memories  of  men;  his  children 
were  taken  away  from  him;  all  this  be- 
cause the  public  wished  to  amaze  him 
with  its  cruelty. 

Still  this  was  not  the  end.  From  the 
moment  that  he  set  foot  on  our  soil  we 
were  witnesses  to  a  terrible  tragedy:  his 
effort  to  pick  up  the  thread  of  his  life. 
This  giant,  whom  lack  of  sleep,  of  nour- 
ishment, of  peace  and  of  books,  had  been 
unable  to  destroy  and  scarcely  to  weaken, 
asked  of  the  sea,  of  Paris  and  of  Naples, 
that  they  harbor  the  dawn  of  a  new  era 
in  his  art. 

74 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


He  failed. 

At  forty,  confident  in  the  future,  he 
failed.  He  could  but  reach  out  with 
impotent  arms  into  the  past,  lose  him- 
self in  bitter  memories.  American  man- 
agers clamored  for  a  new  play  of  his;  all 
he  could  do  was  to  give  Leonard  Smithers 
"An  Ideal  Husband,"  1899,  to  print,  a 
play  several  years  old. 

His  heavy  lids  drooped  upon  cher- 
ished dreams:  his  successes;  he  walked 
slowly,  in  short  paces,  so  as  not  to  dis- 
turb his  memories;  he  loved  the  solitude 
one  gave  him,  since  it  left  him  alone 
with  what  he  had  once  been.  Yet  still 
the  evil  habit  was  on  him  of  haunting, 
with  some  companion,  the  obscurest 
streets,  dreaming  of  similar  adventures 
in  London.  .  .  .  always  London! 

He  had  to  have  that  oblivion  which 

75 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

alcohol  denied  him.  For  even  in  the 
bars  it  was  London  he  sought.  There 
was  left  for  him  nothing  but  the  Ameri- 
can bars,  which  were  not  to  his  liking. 
One  evening  at  Chatham's  he  had  been 
told  his  presence  was  unwelcome.  There 
on  the  terrace  he  had  tried  to  distract 
his  incurious  eyes,  but  the  passers-by 
gazed  at  him  too  curiously;  he  gave  up 
even  that. 

All  his  face  was  furrowed  by  tears. 
His  eyes  seemed  caverns  hollowed  out 
by  pale  tears;  his  heavy  lips  seemed 
compact  of  sobs  and  oozing  blood;  and 
everywhere  was  that  horrible  bloating 
of  the  skin  that  signals  human  fear  and 
heartache  corroding  the  body.  An  un- 
wieldy ghost,  an  enormous  caricature, 
he  cowered  over  a  cocktail,  always  im- 
provising for  the  curious,  for  the  known, 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


and  for  the  unknown  —  for  anyone  — 
his  tired  and  tainted  paradoxes.  But 
mostly  it  was  for  himself  he  improvised; 
he  must  assure  himself  he  still  could,  still 
would,  still  knew. 

He  knew  everything. 

Everything.  The  commentaries  on 
Dante;  the  sources  of  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti;  the  events  and  the  battles  of 
history  —  of  all  he  could  talk  as  a  strip- 
ling talks,  smiling  sometimes  his  smile 
that  was  of  purgatory,  and  laughing  — 
laughing  at  nothing,  shaking  his  paunch, 
his  jowls,  and  the  gold  in  his  poor  teeth. 

Slowly,  word  for  word,  he  would  in- 
vent in  his  feverish,  stumbling  agony  of 
art,  curious,  fleeting  parables:  the  story 
of  the  man  who,  having  received  a  worth- 
less coin,  voyages  forth  to  meet  in  com- 
bat the  ruler  whose  doubly  counterfeit 

77 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

presentment  he  has  found.  .  .  .  But  he 
lacked,  for  the  setting  down  of  these 
tales,  the  golden  tablet  of  Seneca. 

He  wasted  himself  in  words;  perhaps 
he  tried  to  lose  himself  in  them.  He 
sought  scholars  that  he  might  find  in 
them  an  excuse  for  finding  himself 
again,  for  living  anew,  for  being  born 
again,  and  to  keep  him  from  overmuch 
thinking  about  ungrateful  plagiarists. 

Wilde  once  told  a  tale  of  a  king  and 
a  beggar,  and  said  at  close:  "  I  have  been 
king;  now  I  will  be  a  beggar."  Yet  he 
remained  to  the  very  last  day  the  per- 
fect, well-groomed  Englishman — and  did 
not  beg. 

That  would  indeed  have  been  a  new 
life,  this  life  that  fate  denied  him. 

Words  fail  to  paint  properly  the  chaos 
of  hope,  of  words  and  laughter,  the  mad 

78 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


sequence  of  half-concluded  sentences, 
into  which  this  poet  plunged,  proving  to 
himself  his  still  inextinguished  fancy,  his 
battling  against  surrender,  his  smiling 
at  fate;  or  to  suggest  the  grim  dark  into 
which  he  always  must  turn,  daily  fearing 
death,  in  the  narrow  chamber  of  a  sordid 
inn. 

He  had  been  in  the  country,  in  Italy, 
and  he  longed  for  Spain,  for  the  Mediter- 
ranean; there  was  nothing  for  him  save 
Paris  —  a  Paris  gradually  closing  against 
him,  a  deaf  Paris,  bloodless,  heartless,  a 
city  without  eternity  and  without  legend. 

Each  day  brought  him  sorrows;  he 
had  neither  followers  nor  friends;  the 
direst  neurasthenia  tortured  him.  Want 
clutched  at  him;  the  pittance  of  ten 
francs  a  day  allowed  him  by  his  family 
was  no  longer  increased  by  any  advances 

79 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

from  his  publishers;  he  must  needs  work, 
write  plays  that  he  had  already  con- 
tracted to  undertake,  —  and  he  was 
physically  unable  to  arise  from  his  bed 
before  three  in  the  afternoon! 

He  did  not  sour  under  all  this;  he 
simply  let  himself  run  down.  One  day 
he  takes  to  his  bed,  and  pretends  that 
he  has  been  poisoned  by  a  dish  of  mus- 
sels in  a  restaurant;  he  gets  up  again, 
but  wearily,  and  with  thoughts  of  death. 

He  attempts  his  stories  all  over  again. 
It  is  like  nothing  save  the  bitter,  blind- 
ing brilliance  of  a  superhuman  firework. 
All  who  saw  him  at  the  close  of  his  career, 
still  spraying  forth  the  splendor  of  his 
wit  and  his  invention,  whittling  out  the 
golden,  jeweled  fragments  of  his  genius, 
with  which  he  was  to  fashion  and  em- 
broider the  plays  and  poems  he  still 

80 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


meant  to  do  — who  saw  him  proudly 
lifting  his  face  to  the  stars  the  while  he 
coughed  his  last  words,  his  last  laughter, 
—  will  never  forget  the  tremendous, 
tragic  spectacle  as  of  one  calmly  damned 
yet  proudly  refusing  utterly  to  bend  the 
neck. 

Nature,  at  last  kind  to  him  who  had 
denied  her,  gathered  all  her  glories  to- 
gether for  him  in  the  Exposition.  He 
died  of  its  passing,  as  he  died  of  every- 
thing. He  had  loved  it,  had  drunk  it  in 
large  measures,  greedily,  as  one  drinks 
blood  on  the  battlefield.  In  every  palace 
of  it  he  built  again  his  own  palace  of 
fame,  riches,  and  immortality. 

For  this  dying  man  it  was  a  long  and 
lovely  dream.  One  day  he  passed  out 
through  the  Porte  de  1'Alma  to  look  at 
Rodin's  work.  He  was  almost  the  only 

81 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

wayfarer  thither.  That,  too,  is  tragedy; 
and  the  master  showed  him,  quite  near 
by,  the  Porte  de  1'Enfer. 

But  enough  of  details;  on  to  the  end. 

Thirteen  persons,  in  a  bedroom  out 
by  the  city  limits,  remove  their  hats 
before  a  coffin  marked  with  a  No.  13;  a 
shaky  hearse  with  shabby  metal  orna- 
ments; two  landaus  instead  of  a  funeral 
coach;  a  wreath  of  laurel;  faded  flowers; 
a  church  that  is  not  draped  for  death, 
that  tolls  no  death-note,  and  opens  only 
a  narrow  side-entrance  for  the  procession; 
a  dumb  and  empty  mass  without  music; 
an  absolution  intoned  in  English,  the 
liturgic  Latin  turned  to  a  non-conformist 
jumble;  the  glittering  salute  of  a  captain 
of  the  guard  on  the  Place  Saint  Germain- 
des-Pre*s;  three  reporters  counting  the 
participants  with  cold-blooded  precision 

82 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


—  that  is  the  farewell  that  the  world 
takes  from  one  of  its  children,  from  one 
who  had  wished  to  illuminate  and  spread 
far  the  splendor  of  its  dream;  —  that  is 
the  knell  of  a  life  of  phantasms  and  of 
dreams  of  impossible  beauty;  —  that  is 
the  forgiveness  and  the  recompense;  — 
that,  on  a  false  dawn,  is  the  first  rosy 
light  of  immortality. 

Wilde,  who  was  a  Catholic,  received 
but  two  sacraments:  the  first  while  in  a 
coma,  the  last  in  his  last  sleep.  The 
priest  who  looked  after  him  was  bearded 
and  English;  seemed  himself  a  convert. 
In  all  justice  I  would  assert  here  that 
Wilde  was  sincerely  enough  a  Catholic 
not  to  have  need  of  the  last  rites;  that  he 
devoutly  loved  all  the  Romish  pomp  and 
ceremony,  even  to  the  color-effects  of  the 
stained  windows  and  the  notes  of  the 

83 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

organ;  and  that  some  of  all  this  might 
rightly  have  been  his  due,  rather  than 
this  stolid  farce,  this  hasty  burying,  this 
oppressive  absolution,  in  which  the  vicar 
seemed  to  be  washing  his  hands  clean  of 
this  taint  of  unrighteousness. 

It  was  in  our  hearts,  in  us,  that  the 
true  religion  was. 

I  cannot  judge,  cannot  praise,  Oscar 
Wilde  here.  Properly  to  seize  and  set 
forth  his  curious  genius  were  a  greater 
task.  One  will  not  find  that  genius  in 
his  writings.  Witty  and  sublime  it  is, 
there;  but,  for  him,  too  piecemeal.  His 
work  is  the  shadow  of  his  thoughts,  the 
shadow  of  his  illuminating  speech. 

One  must  conceive  him  as  one  who 
knew  everything  and  said  everything  in 
the  best  way.  A  Brummel,  who  was  a 
Brummel  even  in  his  genial  moments. 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


And  one  who  would  have  fulfilled  that 
part  while  tasting  of  shame  and  of  un- 
happiness. 

None  believed  in  Art  more  than  Wilde. 

I  will  close  this  oration  by  an  illusion 
to  his  simplicity.  Wilde,  who  suffered 
so  much,  suffered  under  his  reputation 
of  being  affected.  One  evening  Wilde, 
who  was  not  usually  fond  of  publicly 
deploring  his  lost  treasures,  lamented  his 
paternity.  After  he  had  told  me  of  his 
son  Vivian's  conversion  to  the  Catholic 
faith,  the  boy  having  quite  simply  de- 
clared to  his  guardian  "  I  am  a  Catholic," 
Wilde  said  with  a  smile,  ''And  Vivian, 
twelve  years  old,  lies  down  on  a  couch, 
and  when  they  wish  him  to  get  up,  says; 
'Leave  me  —  I  am  thinking!'  with  a 
gesture,  mind  you,  of  my  own  —  a  ges- 
ture that  people  have  jeered  at  and  of 

85 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

which  they  have  always  declared  it  was 
affected!"  That  was  the  beginning  of  a 
rehabilitation  among  the  mob. 

And  now  the  grandson  of  this  Math- 
urin,  who  admired  Balzac,  from  whom 
this  unfortunate  borrowed  his  fatal  pseu- 
donym of  Sebastian  Melmoth,  sleeps;  he 
sleeps,  this  son  of  a  noble  and  learned 
father  and  mother,  at  whose  christening 
stood  a  King  of  Sweden;  sleeps,  and 
sleeps  badly,  in  a  churchyard  that  is  far 
enough  away  to  choke  the  courage  and 
the  prayers  of  whoso  might  wish  to  ven- 
ture there.  Hardly  will  the  echo  of  bor- 
rowed fables  wake  or  lull  him.  Hardly 
will  the  occasional  utterance  of  his  name 
in  scandal  reach  him,  bringing  its  burden 
of  insult. 

He  will,  I  hope,  pardon  me  these 
words,  uttered  only  for  history,  for  sin- 

86 


ERNEST  LA   JEUNESSE 


cerity  and  for  justice,  and  to  be  witnesses 
for  one  who  was  his  friend  in  evil  days, 
who  is  neither  aesthetic  nor  cynic,  and 
who  in  all  humility  sends  greeting  to  him 
in  his  silence  and  his  peace. 


RECOLLECTIONS 

OF 

OSCAR  WILDE 

BY 

FRANZ   BLEI 


RECOLLECTIONS 

"  T"    IFE  is  frightfully  devoid  of  form. 

-*— '  Its  catastrophes  occur  in  the  wrong 
places  and  to  the  wrong  people.  Gro- 
tesque horror  plays  round  about  its 
comedies,  and  its  tragedies  wind  up  in 
farce.  It  wounds  you  when  you  would 
approach  it;  it  lasts  too  long  or  too 
briefly/' 

If  one  seek  an  example  to  these  senti- 
ments, one  would  find  none  better  than 
the  life  of  him  who  uttered  them.  For 
every  word  of  Oscar  Wilde's  came  true 
in  his  own  case,  up  to  that  one  which 

9* 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

declared  that  Art,  and  Art  alone,  could 
safeguard  us  against  the  soiling  dangers 
of  life.  His  passion  for  discovering  the 
ways  that  fare  between  Truth  and 
Beauty  led  him  into  discredited  paths 
that  spelt  anathema  to  the  conventional; 
he  believed  he  could  tread  those  ways 
safely,  since  he  carried  before  him  the 
illumining  torch  of  Beauty.  But  Life 
always  wounds  those  who  approach  it 
from  dreams.  And  Wilde,  like  his  own 
Dorian,  had  moments  in  which  he  saw 
evil  only  as  a  means  towards  realising 
his  conception  of  the  beautiful,  and  so 
one  saw  him  consorting  with  evil.  He 
recognised  sin  as  the  only  thing  that  in 
our  time  has  kept  color  and  life,  and  that 
we  cannot  hark  back  to  holiness  and  can 
learn  far  more  from  the  sinner.  As 
Dorian  was,  so  was  he  a  type  that  our 

92 


FRANZ  BLEI 


times  desires  strongly  and  yet  fears,  that 
we  picture  to  ourselves  in  secret  fancies 
and  worshippings  and  yet  crucify  when 
it  comes  to  life.  For  not  yet  is  there  one 
law  over  both  thought  and  deed,  and  we 
must  be  grateful  to  this  divorce  for  our 
scheme  of  life,  without  which  our  world 
would  be  the  richer  only  for  one  animal 
without  sin. 

Wilde's  literary  residue  would  be  im- 
portant enough  to  secure  his  name  to 
posterity.  But  his  life  encountered  a 
fate  that  took  precedence,  with  its  gro- 
tesque tragedy,  over  his  work,  and  over- 
shadowed it  scurrilously  with  a  blackness 
that,  in  England,  was  as  a  night  of  pesti- 
lence. One  may  almost  admire  the 
stupid  power  for  cruelty  in  such  a  people 
that  —  peer  and  butcher-boy  acting  as 
one  man  —  dealt  out  to  its  one-time 

93 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

darling  a  two  years'  torture,  and,  not 
satisfied  with  that,  wished  to  stamp  out 
even  the  memory  of  him  as  of  one  in- 
famous. One  must  needs  explain  this 
cruelty  as  a  mob  outbreak  of  Sadism, 
not  to  be  found  altogether  extraordinary 
there,  where  flagellation  marks  the  high- 
est plane  of  erotic  culture. 

English  society  is  always  ruled  by  a 
dandy,  and  not  only  since  the  days  of 
Brummel  and  Selwyn.  The  greater  the 
dandy,  the  more  absolute  his  rule. 
Wilde  was  the  acknowledged  master  and 
tyrant;  he  lashed  that  society  and  spared 
not,  and  it  cringed  before  him,  since  he 
was  dandy  by  the  grace  of  God.  Magic 
words  he  had,  that  paradoxically  sub- 
jugated the  truths  of  to-morrow.  Yet 
somewhere  a  lover  hides  always  in  his 
scabbard  of  senseless  love  a  dagger  of 

94 


FRANZ  BLEI 


hate  that  some  day  is  bared  and  kills  the 
beloved.  Wilde  was  both  a  dandy  and 
a  genius;  democracy  can  suffer  neither 
in  the  long  run. 

"Dandyism  is  simply  a  manner  of 
being,  and  is  not  to  be  made  in  any  way 
tangibly  visible."  One  notes  from  this 
sentence  that  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  does 
not  insist  upon  the  importance  of  the 
dandy's  more  specific  arts  —  of  body 
and  vesture  —  as  compared  to  the  beauti- 
fully shaded  art  that  may  be  achieved  by 
mere  living.  This  is  wrong.  One  may 
live  one's  life  in  the  most  delicate  shad- 
ings,  may  dress  and  act  as  a  dandy,  and 
yet  remain,  like  Whistler,  merely  a 
painter.  It  is  the  visible,  material  ele- 
ments that  compose  the  importance  of 
the  whole.  The  dandy  is,  before  all  else, 
a  decorative  artist,  whose  material  is  his 

95 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR   WILDE 

own  body.  That  seems  but  a  slight 
matter.  But,  if  all  the  world  went 
naked,  one  would  have  a  higher  and 
better  valuation  of  the  one  exception 
that  went  clothed.  The  dandy  is  an 
artist.  He  is  egoistic  as  an  artist,  de- 
lights, like  him,  to  deal  with  the  world, 
and  feels,  like  the  artist,  most  in  his  ele- 
ment when  conspicuously  alone.  Only 
one  distinction  I  would  draw  between 
them,  and  that  is  upon  a  point  of  art: 
that  of  the  dandy  is  unselfish,  since  he 
offers  it  to  all  who  wish  to  see.  One 
error  should  be  scouted:  clerks  and  dig- 
nitaries who  happen  to  dress  exagger- 
atedly are  by  no  means  dandies.  Not 
all  who  versify  are  poets.  The  clerks 
and  the  dignitaries  may  compose  their 
toilettes  as  finely  as  they  will;  they  are 
still  primarily  clerks  and  dignitaries. 


FRANZ  BLEI 


Dandyism,  too,  like  every  other  art,  has 
its  dilettanti.  But  here  is  the  case:  the 
whole  being  of  the  dandy  must  be  full  of 
his  art ;  all  that  he  does,  says,  and  thinks, 
must  emanate  from  his  dandyism.  And, 
unlike  other  artists,  he  may  never  be 
less  than  his  work;  on  this  or  that  point 
his  personality  must  always  loom  as  the 
greater  —  greater  than  all  the  sum  of  all 
his  powers  that  only  come  singly  to 
utterance.  A  dandy  will  say  that  a 
really  well  arranged  bouquet  for  the 
buttonhole  is  the  only  thing  that  joins 
art  and  nature,  for  he  has  seen  it  as  life's 
first  duty  to  be  as  artistic  as  possible, 
and  knows  that  the  second  duty  has  not 
yet  been  discovered. 

No  dandy  has  more  conscientiously 
fulfilled  this  duty  than  Wilde;  later  days 
proved  that  in  this  fulfilment  he  had 

97 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  OSCAR  WILDE 

spent  his  genius.  He  wrote  occasion- 
ally, when  he  had  no  audience;  for  as  a 
dandy  he  was  of  the  type  that  spends  its 
life  declaiming.  No  poet  ever  set  art 
above  nature  more  nobly  than  Wilde,  for 
his  ambition  was  not  to  be  a  poet,  but 
more  than  that:  a  dandy.  He  dreamed 
of  an  abstract  beauty  that  might  never 
run  into  the  danger  of  losing  itself  in  life, 
since  it  never  arose  out  of  life,  —  of  a 
beauty  that  would  prove  nothing,  that 
would  not  even  have  any  intrinsic  pur- 
pose. For  even  this  conscious  purpose 
in  beauty  seemed  to  him  only,  at  best,  a 
moral  pose  in  disguise. 

It  is  not  in  his  writings  that  one  will 
find  this  strange  man's  genius;  only  a 
shadow  of  it  is  there.  One  who,  like 
Wilde,  does  not  centre  his  artistic  tem- 
perament upon  a  single  expression,  upon 

98 


FRANZ  BLEI 


the  art  and  craft  of  a  single  book  or  a 
single  poem,  but  utters  it  rather  in  his 
whole  living  and  being,  will  achieve  in 
his  books  and  poems  only  the  fragmentary 
that  even  to  himself  must  seem  slight, 
and  that  must  always  be  subject  for  his 
own  irony.  "All  bad  writing  is  the 
result  of  sincere  feeling"  —  Wilde  as- 
serted that  when  he  was  at  the  height  of 
his  fame,  when  he  ranked  the  poet  and 
poetry  far  beneath  dandyism,  and  gladly 
deserted  poetry  in  favor  of  success  as 
dandy.  Only  when  he  was  neglected 
and  despised  and  ill  and  miserable,  sin- 
cere feeling  bred  in  him  his  one  great 
poem:  The  Ballad  of  Reading  Gaol  He 
could  assert  his  paradox  only  as  a  dandy; 
as  poet  he  went  counter  to  it.  Then  he 
had  fashioned  art  into  his  life;  now  life 
fashioned  him  to  his  art. 

99 


THE  WORKS  of 
OSCAR    WILDE 

The  Plays  of  Oscar  Wilde. 

In  Three  Volumes,  containing,  "  Lady  Winder- 
mere's  Fan,"  "A  Woman  of  No  Importance," 
"An  Ideal  Husband,"  "  The  Importance  of  Being 
Earnest,"  "  Salome,"  "  Duchess  of  Padua,"  and 
"  Vera;  or  The  Nihilists."  Cloth,  gilt  top,  3  vols., 
boxed,  $3.75  net.  Vols.  I  and  II,  $2.50  net.,  Vol. 
Ill,  sold  separately,  $1.50  net. 

Salome". 

OSCAR  WILDE'S  remarkable  tragedy.  A  special 
edition  with  the  original  illustrations  by  AUBREY 
BEARDSLEY,  printed  on  Japan  vellum.  Text 
printed  on  heavy  deckel-edge  paper;  bound  in 
black  cloth  with  Beardsley  design  in  gold,  gilt 
top.  $1.00  net. 

Epigrams  and  Aphorisms,  by  OSCAR  WILDE.    A 
complete  collection,  embracing  the  entire  range 


of  Wilde's  prose  work,  and  preserving  in  concise 
form  the  essence  of  the  author's  best  efforts. 
Bound  in  half  leather,  and  printed  on  heavy 
deckel-edge  paper.  $1.50. 

The  Renaissance  of  English  Art,  by  OSCAR 
WILDE.  An  essay  on  Art  and  ^Eestheticism  de- 
livered as  a  lecture  during  his  American  tour. 
Cloth,  $0.50  net. 

The  Ballad  of  Reading  Gaol,  by  OSCAR  WILDE. 
A  poem,  in  which  the  author  rises  to  a  height  of 
poetic  expression  that  has  not  been  surpassed 
in  English  during  the  past  fifty  years.  Cloth, 
$0.50  net. 

The  Canterville  Ghost,  by  OSCAR  WILDE.  An 
amusing  chronicle  of  the  tribulations  of  the 
Ghost  of  Canterville  Chase,  when  his  ancestral 
halls  became  the  home  of  the  American  minister 
to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  Rich  in  humor  and 
satire.  Cloth,  gilt  top,  $1.00. 

JOHN    W.    LUCE    AND    COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  LONDON 


s  AT  v  *: 


A     000  024632 


